Archive for the ‘Groundswell’ Category

A few weeks ago, the Motrin Moms kerfuffle blew up and I tracked it by the numbers just a few days after the explosion. Nearly three weeks later, it’s time to revisit the incident to see what’s happened.

[Brands that get punk’d by social media have an opportunity to quickly respond and enable the groundswell to pirouette the energy towards a positive direction]

Running the numbers you can see interest has piqued for Motrin:

People are curious: Google insights indicates a spike in searches for the term “Motrin”.

There’s more interest in Motrin than other competitors: comparing terms “Motrin” to “Tylenol” and “Ibprofen” other brands in the space, there’s a peak that outperforms the market.

Alexa, a third party traffic monitoring tools, shows a lift in traffic to motrin.com

Compete.com, a third party traffic monitoring service, also shows a lift in traffic to Motrin.com

Despite this interest the Motrin has generated the corporate webpage still has an apology dated from Nov 20th (today is Dec 4th)

Motrin misses an opportunity by sulking in the corner
Unfortunately, not much has happened from Motrin’s behalf. The motrin.com corporate homepage is dated with an apology from Kathy Widmer dated Nov 20th and referencing an apology “4 days ago”. Whether or not you think that Motrin did something wrong with their ad or not it really doesn’t matter, as there’s an opportunity being wasted that Motrin should leverage. My job is to help the largest brands in the world understand and benefit from connecting with their customers using web tools, and if motrin were my client, I would advise them with the following:

[Rather than wallow in sorrow, Motrin should leverage global interest in it’s brand. Rather than telling customers what pains them, Motrin should benefit from word of mouth by asking the community “what pains you?”]

Rather than cower in the shadows, Motrin should:

1) Stop Reacting and Develop a Strategy To Lead: Learn how to Judo throw by using the weight of the Groundswell to aid you. Before deploying any tactics, first understand that there are many eyeballs now on Motrin and in some PR circles this is good press from bad –leverage it. If you’re listening to a recent podcast episode of For Immediate Release there’s global attention on Motrin within the social media circle that is quite amazing since the product is only sold in US.

2) Remove the Apology: Suck it up and take that down the mea culpa. In the scheme of things, not every mother was insulted, and the Motrin moms is not indicative of what’s being said by moms that didn’t even see the video ad. Motrin has responded quickly, removed the ad and given a sincere apology in my opinion. Great, now it’s time to move towards the path of recovery.

3) Listen to the Community by Asking “What Pains You”: At Forrester, we use the term “Listening” as one of the objectives for social computing, suggesting that brands can better understand their customers by gleaning insight to what’s already being said. Here’s the opportunity for Motrin to leverage the Groundswell, since many members have already created their own ads (such as this clever play on big boobs), build off the momentum and develop a program to ask mothers what pains them. Obviously telling them what pained them, and playing the empathy card backfired, so instead, just ask them. Allow them to tag the videos, photos, and blog posts with #whatpainsme.

4) Allow the Groundswell to Advertise on Your Behalf: Now that this content has been created by the community, aggregate the popular posts, tweets, video and images on your blog, or corporate homepage, and allow the discussion to continue. Fortunately for Motrin, the worst criticism has already occured, so by even including negative submissions shouldn’t be a problem. By doing this, Motrin will be the center of discussion around pain –which can offer a solution with their relief products.

The above example is advice I would give Motrin if they were my client, but I’m sure there are plenty of other ways to allow both the community and brand to win.

That’s just my take, if you were reporting to the VP of Marketing at Motrin, what would you recommend they do?

If you weren’t following what was happening online this weekend (yes, yes, ok you’ve got a life) there was a Groundswell against Motrin’s latest viral advertisement that was rejected by mothers in Twitter, spread to blogs, and YouTube. I’m not a mom, so at first glance I didn’t understand the offense, but apparently, it was condescending to moms who perceived wearing babies in a sling as ‘fashionable’ accessory, and who didn’t wanted to be labeled as an ‘official mom’. The original video, which was trying to lean on the light side, took to many generalizations with mothers and resulted in a revolt capped by this backlash video.

As much as I’m interested in what folks are saying, allow me to provide an aspect that most others aren’t: short term numerical numbers. (it’s the analyst in me)

The Motrin Moms Backlash by the Numbers
I watch the twitter storm start on Saturday (thanks zsazsa), and watched it carry on through the weekend, I’ve taken snapshots of various analytics and social media tools now on Monday morning.

Above Screenshot: The Motrin.com site is back up on Monday 11am PST, after being down for a few hours, with the public apology –which I think is handled well

Conclusion: It’s not as bad as it looks…yet
In summary, there were some major blips in social networking tools like Twitter, (it was the top trending topic over the weekend, meaning many saw it that weren’t directly involved) however it’s not likely to cause enough of impact search engine results for “motrin”, be a mainstream press story, or cause damage to stock price.

Overtime, these search results may fade away, depending on how Motrin reacts, and how mothers decide to press the situation.

Although brand backlash certainly wasn’t intention, I’m sure that some at advertising firm who created the campaign will chalk this up as a success (it got influencers talking about the brand –who previously weren’t), although the PR group certainly has been dealing with this firestorm all weekend.

Lessons Learned

Always test your campaign with a small segment first

Always have staff on hand to be prepared to respond during the weekend

Don’t launch a campaign right before the weekend unless you’re prepared to respond

The participants have the power, so participate

For better or for worse, more influencers are talking about Motrin than ever before

I’d love to hear your comments on the fiasco, what short term and long term impacts does this have to the brand? Update: more stats from Freshtakes

I’m pleased to let you know that this year’s Groundswell awards were presented yesterday by Josh Bernoff at our conference in Dallas. I was one of the final judges, although Josh and Zach Hofer-Shall were instrumental in sorting through over 150 submissions. Congrats to:

Some of the winners told me although there are other industry awards, this one was really the important one they wanted to achieve as far as measuring deployment. Thank you all for submitting, and keep on doing the good work to connect with customers, employees and people.

He points out that inactives (people that cannot be reached through social technologies) has reduced from 44% to 25%. This means that three fourths of the US online users is touched by social technologies. Also note that more people who consume this content has increased from 48% to 69%.

Do note that to be accurate in your marketing, like you have specific personas for your marketing efforts, you’ll need the same technographic profiles for those personas. Age, culture, professional, and other factors all play into each technographic ladder.

When Josh and Charlene (I affectionately call them ‘Jarlene’) asked me to donate some of my schwag, I had no idea my Flip Camera given to me from MySpace was going to be ground into a pile of dust (he now owes me a new one).